Abstract:

This paper is a description of a computer based intelligent tutoring system for French as a second language, and of its ancillary grammar editor, which is built on an object oriented, unification-based natural language processor. First I review some of the considerations that motivate using intelligent tutoring systems in second language education. Second, I discuss the details of object oriented programming and unification grammar. Third, I give some examples of how this software interacts with students and of what sort of grammatical phenomena it is capable of handling. I will show how the parser straightforwardly handles some thorny problems of complex grammatical structures (e.g. conjunctions; reflexive binding; phrase embedding; dislocated, missing, or superfluous parts of speech) which have had an inhibitory effect on CALL parsing applications in the past.

Author: L. Kirk Hagen